A superior police procedural thriller, Memories of Murder, is another example of the maturity of the South Korean film industry. On the surface, Memories of Murder is every bit as skillfully made as the best examples of western psychothrillers. It deserves comparison to Jonathan Demme's

The killer revealed?

Silence of the Lambs but at the same time makes a final judgment on the serial killer genre that sets it apart from the genre Lambs spawned which is populated by urbane, evil geniuses and their earnest sophisticated pursuers.

Based upon the first documented serial killing in South Korea that occured in the mid-80s, Memories is set in a rural town against the backdrop of the military rule and war paranoia that gripped the country at the time. Except for the occasional protest and air raid drills, the town of Hwaseong carries on with melancholy life that is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a killer in their midst.

The chief detective in charge of the case, Inspector Park, is a country policeman who seems untroubled by the discovery of the bodies of young women in fields and woods, their arms bound and always found after a rainy night. Park verges on cliche as the bumpkin-like detective who can hardly secure a crime scene much less deduce a pattern between the killings. Much of the film's black humour is derived from Park and his thuggish sidekick's matter of fact beatings of suspects and planting of evidence in their bid to quickly solve the crimes.

As the killings continue (never shown except in the aftermath or at the very moment of the abduction), a big city detective, Suh Tae-yun, shows up to lend a scientific angle on the investigation. Immediately, the methods of the two detectives conflict with Inspector Suh's cold reasoning seemingly exposing Park's rough-housing as base ineptitude. If the film was only this conflict, Memories would have quickly become stale, but director Bong Joon Ho delicately balances the clowning of Park's part of the investigation with his humanity. The sophisticated city detective, on the other hand, we see is not entirely successful with his theories as the movie carries on.

Whereas most in the serial killer genre have been stuck in the macabre, Memories has quite the light touch. Even given the spectacular nature of the murders, the town seems to treat it more like a distraction while the police are more chagrined at the press criticism (tame by western standards) than with the lack of success of the investigation. Park is content to manufacture suspects out of a range of unfortunates who he sweeps up regardless of actual value. As in Wild Card which I saw at the Vancouver International Film Festival this year, police brutality seems casually accepted. For his part, Inspector Suh begins edging the investigation more into accepted procedure. After the first two thirds of the film, it seems like Memories will follow a predictable path wherein the country police finally accept the methods of their city cousin. However, it is then that Memories begins to throw the audience for a loop.

Every detective thriller has a number of twists and turns but Memories is more like a steady spiral of red herrings and efficient misdirections. It's only at the end that the audience realizes how true the direction was. Already innured to cliched heroism of the scientific detective, the audience is eager for a resolution that would see the triumph of procedure and intelligence over the depravity of the unknown killer. The audience laps up the stream of clues and patterns that start flying faster and faster by the end. They are hooked just as the police are hooked. The final denouement scene, which places a judgement on all that has come before (and on other serial killer genre films) is masterful.